City Fires
by Lex Lyon
Summary: In the wake of the infection it took mere weeks for the US government to collapse; for states to declare independence from their sovereign nation and for the White House to burn to the ground. It's a dangerous time for Presidential staffers like Rori Burke; but crossbows make excellent deterrents. Pre-Season 1. Eventual Daryl/OC. UPDATE: "Just turn the truck, Daryl!" she screamed.
1. Chapter 1: Eastbound

**Author's Notes: This is my first attempt at Fan Fiction so any pointers or advice on the genre is much appreciated. I also seem to have gotten carried away with my introduction to Rori and the political atmosphere surrounding the virus; but don't worry, the Dixons (and later the rest of the WD crew) will be brought in shortly! Enjoy! **

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**Chapter One: Eastbound  
**

The streets of Washington DC had always been too packed and jammed for driving like this. Living in the District was like living in a beehive; nowhere was peaceful and everyone had a mission or a job or a passion of the day to accomplish. The only reprieve to be found was in the dark bedroom of your apartment, and even then the continual chattering coming from your cell phone interrupted any true rest. The pings and the chimes and the flashing light on the touchscreen, indicating that someone somewhere needed you right away to solve the next mini-crisis or to dampen the flames of the newest fire that burned away in someone's precious corner of the world.

DC was a boiling monster. Choking on government and crime and one-too-many fundraisers.

And the streets were never clear. And you could never do 80 on them. Not like this.

Rori clung to that thought as if it were of some paramount importance. As if mulling over the everydayness of her home could serve as a distraction from what had become the very un-everydayness of the world around her. She grimaced as her knuckles tightened on the steering wheel of the silver Honda Civic. Her foot pressed the pedal. 85…90…

She needed to not think about the un-everydayness. Just for a while. Just until she was clear of Atlanta.

Her mind needed a break. It needed to think about something inconsequential for a while, because Rori was certain that if she continued to think about all the consequential that had taken place over the last few weeks…

Well, she'd probably just fucking lose it.

Her foot pressed harder against the gas pedal. 95…

Inconsequential. Think about stupid shit. "_Don't let your mind wander," _she instructed.

It just wasn't in her nature to think about the mundane, though. It wasn't how she was wired and it damn sure wasn't what her job required of her. She was conditioned to constantly consider the grim details, to focus only on what was important and let someone else deal with the fluff and the noise. And for the past three weeks it had been her job to tirelessly pour over all the facts about the virus. Her job to desperately scramble, to keep a country that was falling apart state by state from completely erupting and destroying itself.

"_Just don't think about it_," she mentally urged herself. But it wasn't that easy. She couldn't just turn her mind off like that.

_"Think about getting away from Atlanta, you don't even know where the fuck you're going."_

That was very true, and also kind of important. It killed her not to be able to stop and warn people. She wanted to tell them to get out of the city, to seek refuge somewhere else. But that was an impossible task. The interstate into Atlanta was choked with traffic, with people under the misguided notion that the city was some mecca of hope and safety. Rori didn't know how the rumor had begun, but it had spread like rogue wildfire and while she had been so desperate to get out it seemed everyone else was desperate to get in.

The rumor fed the panicked desire people had to coalesce against their foe. It gave people a sense that the world hadn't completely fallen into ruin; that somewhere out there someone was still calling the shots. That there was a place to go, a place to make camp and recoup and regather some sense of normality in the face of this collapsed humanity. Beyond that, though, was the infant hope that at this place there would be a plan detailing how to deal with this unprecedented pandemic.

Because that was what the rumor about Atlanta represented. Hope. Hope that everything wasn't lost. Not yet.

But Rori knew different.

In a grim and terrible way she'd rather not think about, the rumor about Atlanta's safety served her well. The eastbound lanes of interstate 85 out of Atlanta were clear and unhindered. No one was looking to face the world beyond the city's borders, no one wanted to venture into the angry and the unknown of rural Georgia.

Besides, even if she had been able to convince a few of the refugees that staying in the city wasn't safe, they would have wanted to know how she knew. And that was something she couldn't tell anyone.

She had been there…she had seen how people revolted against their government. How they screamed and wailed and demanded answers that the Capitol didn't have. Rori had barely escaped the DC riots and the fires and she was terrified that if people knew who she was they'd again demand answers. And she'd already seen what people did when answers weren't given.

It would be best to spare everyone the misery. No one needed to know who she was or how she knew that Atlanta was nothing more than a metal and concrete deathtrap.

The city was doomed. And Rori needed to put as much distance between herself and Atlanta as she could before it was burned and purged.


	2. Chapter 2: This Is Not A Test

**Author's Notes: Like I said, I got carried away with my introduction to Rori and the broader story of the virus' effect on the country. I love world building, it's a habit that likes to run away with me. :) Next chapter, enter the Dixons!**

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**Chapter Two: This Is Not A Test**

_"This is not a test. This is a broadcast of the Emergency Alert System. The Federal Government has declared a national state of emergency and is urging all residents to stay indoors, off the roads and to wait for further instructions. Further instructions will be broadcast on this station when they become available. This is not a test…" _

The recording played on a loop as Rori slept, curled up as best she could in the passenger-side seat with her shoulder jammed into the space between the seat and car door and her head resting against the cool window glass. She had tried to find something besides the recording before nodding off, but every station had been hijacked by the Alert System. It was a national emergency, after all.

Rori had only wanted some background noise while she slept. The woodland which lined the interstate on either side was too dark, too quiet and much too creepy for her liking. She missed DC. She missed the car horns and the intermittent police sirens and the creek of buses as they stopped and started. The sound of the city was often referred to as loud and busy by those visiting Capitol hill, but to Rori it was the sound of home. A steadying and reassuring sound. A sound of progress and life and stability.

It was a sound she subconsciously understood she would not hear again for a long long time…

In the days before she'd left DC, the news had played and replayed clips from a very different sounding DC. Recently, Washington DC had succumbed to the sounds of screaming and shouting and rally chants as people gathered in protest on the steps of the Capitol. Rori had, on more than one occasion, looked out the window and scoffed at them, wondering just what the fuck they were protesting. The virus? Shit, everyone was protesting the virus. It wasn't like the government had unleashed the disease upon the world.

But there they stood, on the Capitol steps, waving signs that read "Stop The Silence" and "End The Government Murder Conspiracy" and, the very blunt and uncreative demand to "Tell The Truth." They waved their demands and chanted some three-beat shout monologue about answers and the citizen right to information.

It all enraged Rori who quietly fumed over the idea that the White House and the Capitol would be hiding anything from the nation. Did people honestly think that their government was so warped and devious that it would hide information from the people it was created to protect? Her servant's heart ached, but she reasoned that people were afraid and they were turning to the only leadership they knew for answers.

Even if they had a really shitty way of asking for those answers.

And so the news showed photos and live footage from the rallies in front of the White House and Capitol. The news organizations claimed the non-stop coverage was healthy, that it kept the citizens of America up to date with the latest from their government. That it allowed people to feel some sort of communal connection and reinforced the message that no one was alone. That everyone was struggling with this same Godless horror.

At one point, when it had all become too much and Rori had grown sick of listening to the PR bullshit, she'd screamed at one of the on-sight reporters - a White House correspondent from one of the national news stations. They'd been standing right outside the Press Room and Rori's voice carried through the nearby halls of the White House with furor, accusation and more than a small hint of exhaustion.

"That's a load of crap and you know it! All you're doing is showing the world that the US government doesn't have any fucking answers! And you're pounding that message over and over again into every home across the country! This isn't about communal suffering, all you're interested in is a story that shows weak leadership and it's terrifying the American people!"

She'd stormed away to her office and shouted again across the Bullpen - the open room packed with interns and White House press staff whose jobs were dedicated to monitoring the hot stories of the day. "Just let them fucking watch Big Bang reruns, just for an hour, and not worry!" Then she'd slammed the door to her office. The force rattled a framed replica of the Texas flag which hung on the doorframe's adjoining wall. The flag was signed by the current Governor of Texas, Rori's home state, and the frame crooked slightly to the left as it was dislodged.

She'd regretted the outburst immediately. It wasn't the press' fault. They were just doing their jobs and covering a story, a damn big story. A monumental story. One the likes of which had never even been imagined. And, truth be told, the American people probably wanted the 24-hour coverage.

It was the White House that needed a breath.

None of them were sleeping, the phone lines were jammed in conversations with France, Germany, South Africa, China…everywhere. And no one knew shit. The consensus was that the first documentations had come from Madagascar, but beyond that no one knew a damn thing. What it was? How to stop it?

How many people were infected?

That last question was one which hovered over them all. How many people had they already lost before they even had a handle on the situation?

The information pouring into the White House and Capitol was staggering. Email, phone, text, fax, it was just too God damned much to keep up with. And then there were the rumors. Seoul had burned to the ground. Syria was declaring a communications blackout. New Zealand was closing its borders and airports.

It was all too much for a young White House Deputy Communications Director with one year under her belt to handle.

But she had to. It didn't matter if it was too much. She fucking had to drink coffee and deal.

* * *

Her dreams that first night on the side of the Georgia interstate were riddled with confusion.

Rori had driven as far as her weary mind would allow before pulling over, turning on the radio and drifting off into a troubled and shallow sleep.

She dreamt of Charlie Brown Field, the small airport she and Max had landed at on the west side of Atlanta, and the immediate problems which ensued as soon as they touched down. Maxwell Stafford was the President's Chief of Staff as well as a former Marine Pilot. He had a face lined with expression and experience, and a pair of intense slate grey eyes that never seemed to betray his thoughts. He was a calm man, the type people called "a rock."

In Rori's dream, his dark hair and day-old stubble seemed a bit blacker than it actually was, as if dream-Max was without the slightly graying shades of age which had begun to set in over the past year. Stress did that to a man…aged them faster…and in Rori's dream black-haired Max was trying to raise the airport tower on his radio.

"Stafford to County Tower," he called into his mouthpiece. The dream was muddled, the colors were too bright and the movement was too fast. Max's voice melded with the Emergency Alert System playing on her car radio back on the side of the interstate. "Stafford to County Ground, this is not a test."

The dream shifted and their small two-person jet was taxiing on the runway. Rori shifted uncomfortably in the passenger-side seat of the car as her mind replayed the events from the day before. Trapped in the dream as her eyes rolled and her teeth gritted.

Her dream counterpart looked out the window of the jet's cockpit and into the too-bright sunlight. A mob was racing towards the jet as it swung around to venture towards the hangars. Though in reality there had only been about twenty or thirty people at the scene which had taken place the day before, in her dream there were thousands.

They were screaming and roaring and carrying the "End The Silence" signs as they swarmed around the jet. They hammered at the windows, cracking the glass, desperate to take the jet. Desperate for the escape the jet represented.

Max turned to her and in the dream the swarm of people had blotted out the sunlight as they enveloped the jet. "You'll need a gun. Further instructions will be broadcast on this station…" He pressed a pistol into her hand and the dream shifted again.

She was in the parking lot, opening the door to a silver Honda Civic and feeling a rush of relief and near-elation when she spotted the keys in the ignition. Max was not with her. Elation turned to a deep, sickening sorrow as the truth behind Max's absence sunk in.

"This is not a test," came to her through the thick haze of the dream. And then something else broke through the suffocating and vivid cloud, something from the real world. A car engine…thumping and loud and guttural. A truck engine.

An old one.

Rori woke to the glare of headlights in her rear-view mirror as panic welled in her throat.


	3. Chapter 3: The Dixons

**Author's Note: Thank you, thank you to those who have reviewed and followed! You guys rock so hard! I'm still nervous about this being my first fic, so please feel free to leave comments about getting the world right or the character dialog right or whatever else. And thank you to everyone who's taken a moment to view and read. Onward to the Dixons! Super excited about the next few chapters!  
**

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**Chapter Three: The Dixons**

The memory of Max was fading as the glare of the headlights grew, bouncing off the rear-view mirror and nearly blinding her.

"Fucking turn off your brights, you asshole," she groaned, still in the process of waking up.

The loss of Max was still fresh and raw and painful and the dream had only done to rip open a wound that hadn't begun to fully mend. She fought the sight of his face away, trying to rationalize the real from the unreal. She wasn't in Atlanta, she wasn't at the airport, that had been yesterday. Max was…he was gone. That had been yesterday.

She forced all these thoughts into her mind and drove back the dream, rousing groggy and confused as the truck engine rumbled behind her on the side of the road.

_"Truck engine_," she mused. Headlights…

Shit! "Shit!" she hissed.

Shocked awake, Rori grasped at the car door with a panicked and desperate spring of mobility. It was the dead of night and her always-wary mind was screaming 'threat' and had tagged the truck as something which could absolutely harbor no good. Not in the middle of the night. Not when the world had gone to hell in a handbasket.

Rori had always been a dubious type. Trust was something that did not come easy in her line of work, and as such the methodology of discerning the trustworthy from the not had leaked over into her personal life. When you swam with sharks on a daily basis, you always had to be on the lookout for teeth.

And right now, in the darkness on the side of the interstate and with a world of dead things lurking just out of sight, Rori had no intention of waiting in her car for whoever was in that truck to come knocking on her window.

After grappling with the handle for a moment, she managed to push the passenger-side door open and spilled out into the bushes below. She crawled hastily towards the treeline, desperately pleading with the darkness around her to keep her unseen.

The night was black, the moon shrouded by rolling clouds and the Georgia forest was lush with summer vegetation. She felt the prick and scratch of thistle and brush clawing at her skin as she slunk away, gritting her teeth against the sharp bites of pain. The gorse and the trees would offer a place to hide, though it would be just her luck that whoever was in the truck had already spotted her, crawling away like a ridiculously overgrown possum. The moon may have not been shining that night but the truck headlights were flooding the roadside with harsh yellow florescence.

This was just the perfect end to a really bad past few days, she thought dismally as she stole behind the trunk of a large red oak and hunkered out of sight. She pressed her head against the dry bark and shut her eyes, willing the truck to just drive away.

Somewhere in the crevices of her brain, a small voice told her to stop thinking so selfishly. It had been a really bad past few days for the whole damn world, not just her. Her current circumstances were a product of her own choices. She had chosen to pull off on the side of the road in the middle of the fucking night, dead people and looters be damned. Not the smartest decision of her past twenty-eight years, but wasn't life kind of a work in progress? You live, you learn, you try really hard not to die…

She tried to calm her mind, the cynicalness of her thoughts not helping, and strained to listen as voices drawled from the roadside.

"Don't see no one. Looks abandoned," said one of the voices. It sounded agressive, rough and brusque and carried a southern cut to it that made her cringe.

In her experience, a voice like that belonged to the uneducated. It was a terrible stereotype and it made her stomach curl nastily, but it was what it was. People like that liked to cause all kinds of problems for people like her. They didn't understand the intricacies of government and didn't understand why you just couldn't stamp shit into law. They didn't understand the rules and were often spoken poorly of in the marble white halls of her offices.

They were problematic, and right now that stereotype was holding true.

_"Just go away," _she mentally pleaded.

"Looks that way, don't it?" a second voice replied smoothly. This one was deep and gravely, with a slick backcountry shrill. "But I wouldn't be so sure. Radio's on, battery ain't dead. And look there, door's open. Whoever abandoned it left in a hurry, seems like."

Rori kept her eyes squeezed shut and tried to shrink behind the oak. She moved her hand to clutch at the pistol holstered at her waist and was relieved to find it was still there. A Walther PK380. Her mind reeled for a moment, losing itself to the thought of how one of the President's primary platforms had been the growth of jobs and manufacturing within the United States. And yet the President's Chief of Staff had handed her a German-made gun.

The irony wasn't lost on Rori, though she chose to ignore it and focus on the present trouble.

"Don't matter. Let's siphon the gas and go," the first voice said with a note of urgency and abruptness.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Rori shifted nervously where she hid. Having her car sucked dry was a poor alternative to being unseen as she'd scrambled from her vehicle. Her mind began to mull over all the nasty possibilities that waited for her alone in the dark and without transportation. She didn't have a real fondness for the woods. They were as foreign to her as the fucking People's Republic of China, and even that comparison was a stretch. She'd visited China a little less than a year ago and in the two weeks she'd spent at the American Embassy and touring the country, she'd become familiar with a fair amount of Chinese customs.

But the woods of Georgia, that was different. That was entirely unknown. Rori had grown up in a city, attended college in a city, did her doctorate in a city, traveled from city to city and currently lived in one of the largest cities in the nation. The closest she had ever gotten to truly roughing it in the woods was when she'd gone pheasant and duck hunting back in Texas, and even then that had been on a game ranch with a fully furnished lodge to sleep in. She could shoot and fish and knew her way around a rifle and could figure out which way was up on a sleeping bag, but the concept of really going at it alone in the woods…surviving without basic human comforts…that terrified her almost more than the concept of the walking dead.

And then another problem presented itself, adding on to the shit stack of crap already piling up against her. "Hold your water, baby bro. Could be this was set up as a trap to lure people in before gettin' jumped. One of us should check the woods for people hidin'," the second voice said with an authoritarian tone.

Rori choked back a groan.

"We should hurry," was all the first voice said in reply. Rori wasn't sure if she heard a meek note of rebellion in it or not, but whatever the emotion it was quickly squashed.

"What's the hurry? You got to take a piss? Well go out there and lady squat and check for anyone hidin' while you're at it. I'll get the hose." There was a silence which followed the second voice's command and Rori cringed as she tried to keep from shivering in dreadful anticipation. They'd find her. They'd find her and do God knew what to her.

The footsteps began, the crunch of brush and leaves and twigs as presumably the first man who'd been told to check the woods started drawing near. Rori began to realize how cold she was as she desperately tried to calm her shivering. Part of the feeling was the terror rising up in her chest, but the other part was the coolness of the night, her short-sleeved outfit and the sweat which had collected on the back of her neck. Georgia in the summer was an oven, but the nights were considerably cooler and as her emotions began to get the better of her, Rori couldn't help but shake with foreboding.

The beam of a flashlight lit up an area just to her right and Rori held her breath. And then the beam crossed to the tree she was hunched behind and her instinctive reaction was to pull her hands in tight to her chest.

That was enough movement to catch his attention.

"Hey!" that first voice, the brusque and drawlingly aggressive one, called.

She said nothing.

"Who the hell's out there!" he demanded, accent thick and loud.

She mentally argued with herself over saying something or just praying and hoping that maybe he'd have a fit of Alzheimer's and just turn around.

"Who the fuck is out there!" No such luck, he was becoming angry and Rori could hear it vividly in his voice as he nearly screamed into the darkness.

Rori inhaled a deep and grounding breath then pushed herself up from where she'd crouched, blinking blindly into the flashlight beam.

"You want to lower that, please?" she called out.

The only response her request got was a loud and hungry moan to her left as a decaying and rotting man in overalls stumbled from the trees and grappled for her arm.


	4. Chapter 4: Survival 101

**Author's Note: So, Merle kind of hijacked this chapter. Who knew a racist redneck could be so much fun to write dialog for! I'm putting a disclaimer on this chapter to warn for some racial slurs and all-around nasty language; I'm trying to stay true to his character. Again, any tips or comments are much appreciated and thanks to those who have commented and followed, and a special thanks to NL March for the encouragement! Enjoy!**

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**Chapter Four: Survival 101**

For as engrossed as she had been over the past several weeks in information about the virus and the status of the infection as it consumed the globe, Rori had never actually come face to face with one of the infected. She had seen images of them on TV, heard the stories of family members dying then reanimating as flesh-hungry crazies with no distinction between their own relatives and a slab of ham. But the TV had provided a barrier, a barrier which had allowed her and everyone else in the White House to do their jobs without the ravaging mental affects that came with having to shoot your grandma or your child after they lunged for your throat.

The White House had been quarantined during the early days of the plague. Staff was given a choice: leave or stay. There was no grey area and no room for compromise or maneuvering. They had been told, in no uncertain terms, that leaving the building meant never coming back. Or, at least, not until the last remnants of the virus had been eradicated.

Rori remembered thinking to herself that this was how bad things had gotten. That they were actually letting people leave, willingly. Without any timeline for reincorporation. No one said it, but everyone could sense there was no hypothetical date set for "eradication." Which was why it was made very clear that gone was gone. They would not risk infection inside the walls of the White House. And, should the First Family and their staff be moved to a different location, security and medical teams would be tight.

Gone was gone.

At first there existed a potent air of service. Lots of people stayed, seemingly bound by duty. Though, Rori and some of her closer friends assumed that many stayed out of a neediness to show off. To show that they would put their jobs and their duty to the White House above everything else.

Those were the first to leave once the outlook began to take on a grim taint.

And then, when things began to get really bad, they lost more. Though, some left by more immediate and…violent routes.

And still they saw no physical walking dead. They were sequestered to the building. Suicides were cleaned up quickly. Bodies were burned. There was still some semblance of order.

Until the riots…

But the riots had befallen the White House in quick and gruesome panic and she and Max had fled quickly with some dumb, spur-of-the-moment purpose in mind.

Leave Washington DC, go to the CDC, find answers.

And that ad hoc mission was what had led her here. To this fucking roadside with a crossbow pointed at her on one side and a teeth-bared corpse lunging for her shoulder on the other.

Rori's first experience with an infected was barely even registered by her until it was over.

She did register her screaming, though, and even as the words were sparking from her lips she mentally reprimanded herself for how utterly imbecilic and childish she sounded.

"What in the holy _fuck _is _that_!?" she wailed, throwing her arms up defensively and scrambling backwards and away from the moaning and mobile cadaver.

_That_ was one of the infected. One of the things causing the mass global crisis she'd been struggling to deal with for the past month or so. Seriously, girl, get it together...

Her heel caught something on the ground as she desperately jumped back and soon the sensation of falling had gripped her, followed by a painful shock of surprise as her spine collided with a protruding tree root. Her breath was knocked out of her by the fall, otherwise she surely would have screamed again. Instead, she threw one hand up as the other fumbled for her Walther. It caught in its holster. She tried to suck the air back into her lungs but only managed a pathetic whimper, terrified and wrought with a cold and intense hysteria. Her reflexes were working from instinct, thank God she knew her way around a shooting range.

But instinct wasn't helping. The Walther stuck.

She was going to die.

Her first encounter was going to kill her.

On the side of the road.

In fucking Georgia.

While those two rednecks were surely laughing their backwoods asses off.

She registered the crossbow quarrel piercing the infected corpse's brain only after the body was on the ground, twitching as its white and lifeless eyes gazed at her.

It took a moment for Rori to realize just how quiet everything had become. Quiet except for her own heavy breathing as she stared at the corpse, dumbfounded and still very frightened. And then the pain set in and she rolled off her back with a prolonged gasp.

She had been about to stand, as best she could, when the crossbow wielding redneck took a threatening step forward.

"Don't move!" he spat and Rori looked up from where she knelt to see his freshly loaded crossbow was now pointed directly at her.

She tried to smile but only managed a painful grimace. The upside to all of this was she wasn't bitten and wasn't dead and the excitement that accompanied those results was hard to ignore. She probably owed him some gratitude, though it was hard to feel thankful when the weapon used to kill her attacker was now sighted on her.

"Thanks?" she tried, nevertheless. It came out somewhat breathless and tentative and she inwardly cringed at how meek it sounded.

"Shuddup!" the man vehemently ordered from behind his crossbow. "The fuck you doing out here?"

Rori blinked a bit conflictedly back at him. "You want me to answer? Didn't you just tell me to shut up?"

The man rocked on his heels, angry and about to take another aggressive lunge forward.

"What the? Ah, ha," the second man appeared from behind the guy with the crossbow with an expression that turned from frustrated curiosity to what Rori could only describe as sly mirth. He chuckled. "Well, what do we have here? Daryl, put it down, you're frightenin' the poor miss."

The slick drawl and seemingly friendly demeanor of the second man was almost more offputting than the first man's - Daryl's - outward aggression. Rori's eyes ticked between the two as Daryl lowered his crossbow and Rori got her first good look at his face.

It was lined with dislike, emotional and wound tight in hostility. His ice-chip blue eyes shined like the eyes of a snake searching for an opening to strike. He pinned her with a hard stare that lasted for about a second longer than she was comfortable with before he looked away and began to rock back on his heels again with nervous energy. He reminded her of a chained dog, full of combative spit and anxious ferocity.

But it seemed the second man was pulling those chains. He, on the other hand, gave off a more controlled demeanor. Surly and rough to be sure, but he possessed a more commanding presence. He was larger than Daryl, too. Dressed in biker getup with arms that bulged out of the leather vest and a head that, Rori was quite certain, had been put more than once into a bar wall. And left a mark, no doubt.

"I see Daryl took care of that ass-muncher for ya," the larger man said, indicating the quarrel-pierced corpse with a nasty sly smirk on his face. "Good thing ya thanked him. He can be a sensitive little pussy about those things."

The larger man patted Daryl's shoulder in an almost mocking way and Daryl shrugged away from it with a sour look on his face. Rori just stared back and forth at the two of them.

Either they were the most obnoxious gay couple she had ever encountered…or they were brothers. Honest to God, their behavior couldn't be explained any other way.

"Yeah," Rori said, though her voice was edged with uncertainty and a lingering hangover of bewilderment. "No, really, thank you." She urged her gratitude towards Daryl who only responded with a prickly frown.

_"Jerk,"_ she thought as her own expression fell.

"Well, much as I'd like to sit around here swapping panty-of-the-month designs, all that noise is bound to draw in ol' Big Red's friends." The biker began to turn, making as if he was heading back towards the vehicles.

Rori gaped after him. "Uh…Big Red?" was all she could muster. A rather pointed question considering the general and all-encompassing confusion she felt at this odd meeting.

The biker turned his eyes back to her, grinning in a way that twisted at Rori's gut. He pointed at the corpse. "S.O.B's got an arrow stickin' through his head," he explained; but Rori only furrowed her brow, clearly not getting it.

"Featherheads? Dirt-worshipers? Indians! C'mon girl, keep up!" he exclaimed with a chuckle that did not sit right with her.

_"Great. A jerk and a racist a-hole. This is why I never had a desire to come to Georgia." _Rori thought bitterly as the two men made their way back to the roadside - Daryl doing so only after he'd dislodged his quarrel from the corpse's head.

Rori followed them, wincing as the pain in her back writhed and caused her to gingerly pick her way through the brush. She was dismayed to find the biker unwinding a black siphoning hose near the rear of her Civic as she came around the front of the car. Her eyes grew wide with a mixture of distress and alarm, trying her best to carefully speak to him without sounding completely hysterical as a childlike possessiveness gripped at her.

"Seriously? Oh, come on, please don't do that!" she tried not to beg as he inserted one end of the hose into the uncapped gas tank. He set a plastic bucket near the rear wheel and only gave her a silent and unsympathetic look. Behind him, Daryl glanced their way but said nothing and was quick to look elsewhere the moment she caught him watching.

"Please? Please! This is…there are so many laws against this kind of behavior!" Rori nearly shrieked as the leather-clad racist a-hole began to suck the gas from the Civic's tank, emptying it into the bucket. "You can't just take people's stuff just because dead people aren't dead anymore!" she protested, clearly beginning to lose what composure she had left.

The fact she had stolen the car in the first place was lost on her at that moment.

"Sorry, darlin'," the biker replied as he wiped his stubble-ringed mouth. "It's called combining resources, survival 101 when the world's gone to shit in a rucksack."

"Yeah, well, I need to survive, too!" she shot back as the remnants of the Civic's gas tank dripped into the bucket.

The biker straightened up and poked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the old rusty Ford truck. "Then stop your bitchin' and menstruating and take a ride with us."

Rori's heart sank into her stomach as she gazed past him at the truck. Her expression was probably screaming disgust because the only response she got from Daryl as he swung up into the cab was an equally distasteful scowl.

Worst of all, the rust-bucket was a fucking three-seater.


	5. Chapter 5: Post-Apocalyptic Skills

**Author's Note: Please review and let me know if you're enjoying! And thanks to everyone who has already done so and left such nice compliments! You guys are awesome! Onward we go!**

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**Chapter Five: Post-Apocalyptic Marketable Skills**

She had to wonder why they'd invited her to travel with them. Rori's experience with strangers since the onset of the infection was that they were neither friendly nor likeable. And though she couldn't exactly peg these two as "likeable," they'd willingly offered to give her a ride…of course, they had only done so after siphoning off her gas tank, but maybe she was just splitting hairs with that bit of prefacing.

It was the end of the world, after all. The rules had changed.

Still, she was certain there were many people out there who would have left her abandoned on the side of the road. Or worse.

Maybe it was because she was a pretty young blonde…

Rori quietly glanced sideways at Merle - he'd introduced himself shortly after they'd pulled back onto the interstate with Daryl electing to ride in the truck bed. Silent suspicion was drawn into every smooth angle on her face, but she said nothing and only sat stiffly on the passenger side of the truck.

They hadn't made a move on her yet, but maybe that was because they wanted to soften her up first. Get her to think they were just jovial redneck vagabonds with hearts of gold before showing her their true intentions.

That was kind of stupid, she mused. Primarily because Daryl was failing miserably at the whole jovial heart of gold thing. He seemed less than ecstatic to have a third wheel on board this fucked-up excursion and had looked her up and down with an expression of vulgar irritation before wordlessly exiting the cab of the truck and climbing into the bed with that monstrosity of a motorcycle. Rori was fairly certain she'd seen an SS Nazi insignia emblazoned onto the side of the bike, but she took painstaking caution to make sure neither Merle nor Dayrl caught her staring at it...with what was, no doubt, a look of shock and mild horror on her face.

Merle had called Daryl a "gay-ass cock-rider" and asked his younger brother why he wouldn't want to cozy up next to a "cute little blonde hussy?" And, at that point, Rori had sorely wished she'd just stayed on the side of the road and taken her chances in the woods.

They weren't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They just didn't seem the type, she thought. And, as she thought about this, a very real sense of dread began to worm its way into her stomach.

Holy mother of Christ, she had just gotten into a car with stranger…two strangers…two strangers with hillbilly accents and a Nazi bike in the bed of their truck! _What the hell was she doing?_

"So…" Rori began in a meager attempt to squash the heavy feeling of foreboding gnawing at every fiber of her newly regained sense of prudence. She couldn't think of a damn thing to say. "You're brothers." It was more a factual statement than a question and Rori almost choked on her mortification.

Merle didn't seem to notice her discomfort, or if he noticed he did a damn fine job of not letting on. "Since birth," Merle said, his Georgia drawl carrying a slight lackadaisicalness to it that was difficult to read.

An awkward and nearly unbearable silence passed between them as the truck roared down the interstate like a bat tearing through the night. Rori's eyes scanned the dash for a clock, only to realize the old clock panel was busted and forever stuck at 2:17pm. She wracked her brain, trying to recall when she'd pulled the Civic to the side of the road. 2am? 3am? Off in the distance the first sliver of light was etching its way along the horizon and as Rori stared out the window she began to feel immeasurably exhausted.

Feeling herself beginning to nod off, she floundered for something to say. Something to keep her awake.

"That's a cool bike." She almost gagged on the words as they came out but in her mildly delirious state of exhaustion she was unable to stop herself. She regretted them immediately and tried not to recoil away from Merle as a wide, bent and toothy grin pulled up the corners of his mouth.

"Restored it myself," Merle bragged.

Rori thought about the SS insignia and found his claim not at all hard to believe.

"So it's yours, then?" she asked, still a bit appalled to be talking about what she considered to be an excruciatingly offensive blight upon humanity. She simply couldn't comprehend how anyone in their right mind could think riding around on a motorcycle with that mark on it was a good idea.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Can give you a ride sometime." The gravely and slick way the proposal slid from his lips made Rori's skin crawl. She had no response and instead returned to staring out the passenger-side window, mind wandering unchecked as the night rolled by beyond the glass.

Her subconscious began to wane as a soft confusion settled over her mind. The warm lining of sunlight that was traced along the horizon blurred with the movement of the truck until it was only an orange line burned onto the inside of her eyelids. She dozed and disoriented dreams followed.

She was in the jet again on the runway. The legion of people were storming forward, screaming and shrieking as they charged in to take the plane. Max was gone and Rori was alone in the cockpit. Fear choked her and crushed in on her chest. The mob raced in, closer. And they weren't people anymore…not in the sense of the living. They were running, screaming and rotten. Dead. Dead people tearing towards the jet she was trapped inside.

And then an arrow pierced the head of one of the corpses and its body crumpled to the ground. A second arrow shot through the skull of the next corpse. Then another arrow and another fallen body.

_"Daryl?"_ she thought through the haze of her dream.

"So what do you do, anyway?" Merle's question jolted Rori awake.

She blinked, startled, and glanced around the cab of the truck. The dawn was pinkening the sky as the heated colors of orange and red reached up from the horizon like long fingers of fire. Rori rubbed her eyes and assessed she had only been asleep for a half-hour.

"Excuse me?" she asked, not quite sure she had heard him right.

Her dream about the jet and the infected was fading, but she couldn't let it go just yet. Something about it was bugging her. She tried to grab hold of the feeling and the memory before it vanished completely in the face of the waking world.

Someone in the dream...

"Your job? How do you make your way? You dress too nice to be a hooker or a hussy like I called you earlier. Unless they grow 'em real nice up north." Merle elaborated and Rori froze.

She refused to look at him and instead stared out the windshield, once again trying to grapple with a panic that was creeping up the back of her throat. All thoughts about the dream were gone, chased away in the light of this new little crisis.

_"Oh crap…hurry, make something up!" _

She couldn't tell him the truth, not even for a moment did she consider that option. Beyond the fact that admitting to working for the White House in this current environment was irrationally stupid, the Dixons did not seem the sort who were cozy with the idea of being around politicians.

A nasty, stereotypical little voice in the back of her head nattered away and wondered if they even knew how to pronounce the word.

_"Shit! Stop thinking like that."_ It was wrong.

The silence that followed Merle's question drew on for longer than Rori was comfortable with as she tried to think about how to answer. She needed to come up with something good, something that made her valuable, something that said "I'm a big fucking deal" and made them want to keep her around for reasons other than the less-than-genuine.

But what the fuck did she say?

"How do you know I'm from up north?" she asked, trying to stall as she thought about her post-apocalyptic marketable skills. She figured speech writing and event coordination wouldn't really go over well out here in bum-fucking-nowhere Georgia with the world fraying at its seams.

But she had other skills; damn it, she had to have them!

"Accent," Merle answered matter-of-factly and without elaboration.

Rori shifted uncomfortably. "Doctor," she blurted out before she could stop herself.

She suddenly felt like she could use one, but Rori continued to press the lie. "I'm a Doctor." That…was not one of her marketable skills.

Rori didn't precisely hate the sight of blood, but it wasn't something she was particularly fond of, either. Biology had never been a subject she'd excelled at and she distinctly remembered claiming she had the flu on the day they'd been scheduled to dissect mice in her college Remedial Sciences Lab. Hell…she wasn't even sure if she knew what an appendix was.

"No shit!" Merle smiled that wry and disconcerting smile as he reached back through the small open window that led out of the truck cab and into the bed. He grasped at Daryl's head for his brother's attention. "You know we got ourselves a genuine, bonafide medical professional right here in our truck, little bro?" He then turned his eyes on her and Rori silent wished he would watch the road. "You gotta be just about the prettiest fortune I think I've ever come across. I bet people would kill to have your tight ass around right about now."

Daryl frowned and Rori swallowed back the ill-feeling that threatened in the wake of Merle's last statement.

"Shit, you ain't no Doctor," Daryl commented through the cab window, pinning Rori with an accusatory and dark stare.

"_Fuck you,"_ Rori thought with irate frustration. _"Fuuuuuuck you! You choose this of all our conversations to chime in with your sage wisdom? Ugh!"_ Rori was so annoyed that even her thoughts were groaning.

She met Daryl's stare with an equally aggressive one, silently challenging him to impart his vast knowledge onto their lesser understanding.

"You're too young," Daryl stated flatly. "Don't Docs have all that schooling and shit to do?"

"Mmhmm," Merle piped up from the driver's side of the truck cab. "Yeah, t'ss why I didn't go be one."

Rori glanced sidelong at Merle, eyes narrow, before glaring back over at Daryl. She'd rather not admit, even to herself, that the hick kind of…maybe had a point.

"You ain't no Doc," he spat before looking away from her. "'Sides, if you was you'd better look after your arms." He said the last bit with a small tone of absentminded mellowness, as if he had reconsidered saying anything at all.

Rori glanced curiously down at her arms. They were covered in scratches from when she'd gone crawling around in the thistle and brush along the interstate. The side of the cuts were swelling and turning a puffy, unhappy red. They were sensitive to the touch, too, and Rori winced as she traced her finger along one of the raised scrapes.

She grumbled. "I have a Doctorate." In Sociology. But Rori didn't mention that detail.

She studied the scratches along her arms and waited for the interrogation to continue. It didn't. The truck cab had become strangely quiet and soon Rori felt their speed slowing. Her eyes glanced up past the dashboard and through the windshield at a roadblock built from sedans, pickup trucks and an overturned semi-truck trailer. The cars and trucks had been turned on their sides and their tires looked as if they had been knifed or shot out. Their scratched and multicolored paint glittered in the early morning light of dawn and Rori scanned the scene for any signs of life around the jerry-rigged and ominous barricade.

Merle stopped the truck and pulled the gear stick down, parking their somewhat safe transport for reasons which were escaping Rori.

"C'mon," Merle barked.

Daryl had jumped out of the truck bed, crossbow quivered and at the ready, and Rori turned a skeptical look onto Merle.

"Why are we stopping?" she asked.

Merle exited the truck, slamming the door and peering back at her through the open driver-side window. "Pillaging," he responded with all the excitement of a wolf about to prowl into a sheep's pen.


	6. Chapter 6: The Barricade

**Author's Note: With the holidays coming to an end and work becoming busier new chapter updates may slow down a bit; not a whole lot because I'm having way too much fun writing this, but just a bit. As an apology, here's an extra-long chapter for y'all! Please let me know if you're enjoying the story and, as always, thanks for the reviews, follows and favorites!**

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**Chapter Six: The Barricade**

"Pillaging? But there's nothing…" Rori's voice trailed off as she bounced on the balls of her feet in front of the truck. Anxiety coiled around her, sending small shivers into her shoulders and contaminating her with the need to fidget. Her fingers nervously worked the safety on the butt of the Walther in her hands as she watched Merle creep around to the left of the multi-car barricade. He was keeping his distance but clearly had a mind to work his way to the back.

Rori had no interest in what was behind the roadblock and would have just as soon hopped back in the truck and turned around. She glanced worriedly at Daryl, who was closer to her than his brother, and tried to make her case.

"They'll be nothing to loot. Someone made that by overturning those cars, so there won't be any supplies in it." Unless someone was living there. The thought sunk in her stomach. What if this was the work of road pirates?

She remembered the briefing on piracy and looting in the Situation Room of the White House. That had been just four days after video of the first state-side outbreak flashed across the TV screens of nearly every American home, showing violent and brutal footage from a Los Angeles hotel where a mob of bloodied people had stormed out the entrance and viciously attacked anyone in their sight. The footage had ended with the flash of a man's face - Rori could still clearly recall the infected man's torn open cheek and that one eye that rolled back into his skull as he bellowed into the camera. The TV picture tilted then rolled skyward; there was a loud "thump," a scream, and then the screen went black.

The moment that footage played on United States' news programs every home had become infected. Fear and panic was a terrible disease and it had caused people to do terrible things in those first dark days.

The briefing in the Situation Room was called in order for the White House to get a handle on what was occurring across the nation in the larger cities as people panicked. Looting had become a nation-wide pandemic in the span of two days as more and more reports of outbreaks hit the news channels from every corner of the US.

The worst cities were also the cities with the highest levels of infection. Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Chicago, Miami,…Atlanta…

There were more, but these were the cities they focused on in their briefing four days after the first outbreak on American soil. The higher-ups from the Military said these cities represented, "a good cross section of the US." For some reason that sentence had sent a violent shiver through her.

It was gut-wrenching to think about how fast the country was crumbling.

The part about piracy had shocked her when the briefing addressed the subject. The worst offenders were what they were calling "road pirates." Camps and groups of people who would set up along roadsides just outside major cities. They would lure people in with roadblocks or fake accidents or scenes that depicted someone in need of help, and then they would attack those people who took the bait.

There had been a lot of back and forth in that room, a lot of passionate talk about keeping the American people safe from both the infected and the criminal. But Rori had wondered just how much they could realistically do. They were one group of people in one room in the basement of one building. And though that building may have been prestigious, may have represented the one hope for stability and leadership in this dying country…Rori had never felt smaller than she had right there in that moment.

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"There's not going to be anything there," Rori insisted again to Daryl. He had his crossbow trained protectively on Merle who was some paces ahead of them and was investigating a safe route around to the back of the barricade. "Those cars are going to be empty. Someone built—" she tried again but was cut short of her point.

"He knows that," Daryl growled back with a small hint of exasperation.

Rori blinked curiously at him. "Then what is he looking for?"

Daryl said nothing and only watched his older brother intently, slowly prowling forward like a guard dog honed in on a potential threat. Rori crept forward a few paces behind the lean, sandy-haired man and couldn't help but notice how tense Daryl was. How almost military-like his movements were. If it hadn't been for the somewhat nervous and aggressive energy which bubbled up in the way he rocked slightly on the balls of his feet as he walked - and the fact that he didn't look or smell as if he had bathed in…ever - Rori would have pegged him as a sort of professional.

She had spent more than enough time around Secret Service agents to pick up on their alert and watchful mannerisms. And Daryl, in some strange way, almost reminded her of that protective and guarded demeanor. Though, the foul mouth, ripped-sleeves, sweat-stains, unkempt dirty hair and strange affinity for plaid kind of killed the illusion.

That, and the fact that there was something oddly animalistic about him. That characteristic was rather off-putting…

"What the hell you starin' at?" Daryl snapped. Rori stopped dead in mid-step and saw Daryl eyeing her sideways, obviously noticing that she'd been staring at him.

Rori was about to answer that she was staring at nothing, but stopped herself short. Daryl hadn't exactly been a friendly peach to her since she'd come aboard this crazy train, and Rori had the sudden - and probably stupid, but at this point things couldn't get much worse, right - urge to not be so compliant to his rudely worded demands.

And before she could stop herself she retorted, "Your ass."

The look Daryl gave her in that moment was one Rori somehow knew would haunt her for a very long time. She was amazed he didn't turn his crossbow on her then and there. His eyes narrowed to slits and she was surprised his teeth didn't crack from the weight his clinched and set jaw was putting on them. He looked so angry that a regretful and guilty embarrassment sank into her stomach and Rori suddenly became very interested in what Merle was doing way far away from her and Daryl.

_"Smartass,"_ she reprimanded herself mentally. _"Dumbass smartass. He's going to knife you in your sleep, just you wait."_

"So…" Rori tried to lamely pick up where they'd left off before this debacle of a tangent. "What is it that Merle's looking for behind car number—" her gimpy try at humor trailed off before she finished her question, eyes snared upon one of the upturned sedans in the blockade.

Was that…?

Daryl had skulked ahead and was following Merle around the side of the barricade. Merle, himself, had disappeared from sight around the front of one of the wrecked cars and Rori called out before Daryl vanished behind him.

"Hey guys? I think that's a cop car!"

Daryl didn't even look like he registered she was saying anything.

"Guys!" she darted forward, uncomfortable with the idea of being left behind this side of an ominous example of how there was no more law and order left in the world. "I don't think this is a very promising venture! I'd rather not meddle with the kind of people who are willing to defile a cop car!"

She tried to not think about the hypocrisy of that statement seeing as how she was currently traveling with two people who very much seemed the sort to relish the thought of sticking it to the police. And there she was again, stereotyping. She tried to shrug the nasty feeling off as she rounded the barricade and pulled up in her tracks. Rori had come around the last overturned car on the side of the roadblock and run headlong into a hostile standoff.

"Put 'em down!"

"You first," Merle responded to the shouted demand with a level yet no less threatening voice. He was holding his Browning Hi-Power straight out from his face and had it trained on a gruff-looking police officer who was aiming his own revolver, a large and clunky model Rori couldn't name, back and forth between Merle and Daryl.

Rori stalled behind the two brothers, disoriented and surprised by the scene, before she remembered the pistol at her hip and drew it from its holster. She couldn't bring herself to point it at the cop, though…she just couldn't. The fact that she even considered that action shocked her cold. And the fact that the cause of that feeling was some unexpected a small notion of protection for the two redneck men standing in front of her was even more shocking. Still, she couldn't do it. This man was a police officer and God knew he'd probably been through more than enough over the past weeks. The circles under his eyes and the grizzled, drawn look on his face told Rori he hadn't had a good night's sleep in quite some time.

Her sympathy rose as she looked the cop over. Cops had had it terrible since the onset of the infection. While everyone else was running away from the crazy flesh-eating once-upon-a-time-human-beings, the police were rallied to run towards them. A lot of them had died. A lot of them… Rori had known many of the DC cops, the ones who had helped during the motorcades and on the White House and Capitol grounds. Many of them had died during the first two weeks…

She couldn't help but look at this cop now and wonder how many of his own brethren had fallen victim to the plague. What had he seen and run towards in the first days? The cop wore a police-issued short sleeve blue button-down and it was undone, revealing a sweat stained white work shirt underneath. He was probably in his late 40s or early 50s with the beginnings of a receding hairline as well as the small pudge of a belly.

But his eyes…Rori would remember his eyes. Dark, brown, exhausted and haunted. And right now they were wide with something very different than fear. There was a daring and challenging stubbornness, a haggard and wan adrenaline that was no less defiant. As if he were looking at Merle and Daryl and thinking these two were nothing compared to what he had already seen and been through.

"Is it just you," Rori asked the officer from behind the brothers, interrupting their tense deadlock. Her Walther was in her hand but it hung at her side, non-threatening.

The cop glanced back at her with a slight expression of surprise, as if he hadn't noticed her presence until now. "What?"

"Is it just you here? At this roadblock? Are you with anyone else?" Rori elaborated.

The officer considered her for a silent moment, gun still aimed at Daryl whose crossbow was returning the favor. "No," the cop answered hesitantly. "No, there's another guy with me." He didn't expand on where his companion was and why he wasn't there.

"Okay, well," Rori started, trying to reason a way out of the standoff before guns began firing. "He's obviously not here." Unless he was hiding on the side of the road with a rifle aimed at them. She didn't mention that and tried to not think about it, either. "So, right now, you're outnumbered. And besides that, we're not here to rob you or anything of the sort." Rori watched Merle and Daryl for their reactions to her claim, desperately hoping she was telling the truth. Honestly, she still had no idea what they were doing or why they had approached the barricade in the first place. "So please, just lower the gun. You don't have to put it down, just lower it?"

She couldn't see either Merle's or Daryl's face and only saw Daryl shifting his weight on his feet as he stood poised with his crossbow and Merle beginning to edge to the side as if he was going to circle around the cop.

Rori tensed and waited for the cop's response, wishing that Merle would just stand still. The cop's eyes darted between the two men, lingering on Merle as he began to move. He started to bring his gun around as if to follow Merle with its aim, but his eyes moved back to her and Rori saw the hesitancy in them.

"What's your name?" she asked, hoping to calm him down.

There was a paused. "Mitch," he said after a moment of consideration. "Mitch Conrad."

Rori smiled, trying to look reassuring. "Okay, Mitch, please. Can you just lower the gun?" And then she shot a warning glance at Merle who was now striding around the cop. "Merle, please stop that and lower your gun, too?"

She caught Daryl peering back over his shoulder at her with a curious expression and tried to give him that same, reassuring smile. It didn't feel like she managed it and instead her face felt taunt and fake.

Her plea was successful, though, and Mitch lowered his gun - whether he did so because of her reassurance or because he was outnumbered was something she couldn't tell. Merle was still circling him like a shark and waving his gun in the cop's direction, causing Mitch to glance around with concern and misgivings.

Rori cringed, still feeling as if the situation could explode in a moment. Daryl was lowering his crossbow, though, and she accepted that as a small win.

"Fine looking piece you got there," Merle exclaimed as he continued to stride around the officer, eyes falling onto the revolver in the cop's right hand.

Mitch stepped away from Merle and kept his eyes on the large man. "Colt. Standard issue," was all he said in return.

"Seems too nice for a doughnut-horking city pig ter be usin'," Merle sneered at the cop.

"Excuse me?" Mitch rounded on Merle, hawkish and affronted.

Rori tensed and tried to divert the oncoming confrontation. "What happened to you?" she asked Mitch, wanting to draw his attention back to her. She looked the cop over and noted the drying blood running down his left arm from up beneath his sleeve as well as his cut and bloodied hands and knuckles.

Mitch turned his neck and glanced back at her. "Got swarmed," he commented then went on to elaborate after catching Rori's confused expression. "I'm Braselton PD, a small town outside Atlanta. It's nearly a ghost town now so my buddy and I drove east out this way 'cause I got family in Greensboro. I'm looking to pick 'em up and take 'em back to Atlanta. Supposed to be safe there." Rori's gaze faltered for a second, jaw tightening, but she said nothing. Atlanta wasn't safe, and soon it was going to get even less.

"We were running on fumes, though, and about six or seven miles west of hear ran into…I dunno, a swarm, I guess?" Mitch said strangely.

"What do you mean?" Rori asked. It seemed like things had calmed down a bit, at least for now. Both Daryl and Merle were listening intently to the cop's story. Though, Merle's face was still twisted up in mistrust.

"Biters," Mitch explained. "'Bout twenty of 'em, all moving together. They were wondering down the road and we blew through 'em. That was dumb. We caught their attention and the whole lot of 'em turned 'round and started limping and lumbering after us. We made it out this far before my cruiser died. No gas." Mitch sighed and pointed at the barricade of overturned cars. "We figured those things would still be comin', so we checked the other abandoned cars for gas. They had none, so we improvised. Built this roadblock by pushing the cars together and tunin' 'em on their sides. Goal was to get the biters to come 'round the sides so we could take 'em bit by bit and not head on."

Rori sized up the roadblock of cars. "Wow. So, they never came, then?" she asked, looking around them at the deserted road void of bodies. In doing so, however, she noticed blood…lots of it…congealed and splattered all over the asphalt like the aftermath of some great battle.

"No, they came," Mitch said. "We put 'em down. And then buried 'em, out that way." Mitch waved his revolver towards the side of the road. "Past the tree line. We dug a ditch. Mass grave ain't no way to put a man to rest, but I'm Christian, ma'am." Mitch looked Rori in the eye, expression somber and earnest. "I wasn't going to just leave 'em here to bake and rot in the sun." He shook his head. "That was yesterday afternoon. Buddy started on down the road to look for supplies while I finished burying the bodies. Should be back soon." He concluded his account of the day before with a note of uneasiness in his voice.

There was a long and drawn-out silence that followed the cop's story. Around them the dawn was brightening over the horizon and already the sound of locust was buzzing in the trees. Once again, Rori was ambushed with an exhaustive tiredness, but she pushed it aside and tried not to show her discomfort as Merle spoke up and asked the question she had been hoping would go uninvestigated.

"You said Atlanta's safe?" Merle frowned a bit dubiously.

"Yeah," Mitch said. "That's what people have been sayin'."

Merle's mouth twisted in a thoughtful and somewhat bull-like expression and Rori could see he was thinking something she wish he wouldn't.

"Daryl?" she asked suddenly. "Can I talk to you?"

Daryl looked at her with a deep-set frown and she nodded her head away from Merle and Mitch, who had begun talking about the Atlanta safe zone rumors. If she was going to jump ship, now seemed like a time to do it. This cop had the potential to help her, and as much as she appreciated the odd kindness Merle and Daryl had shown her by offering to give her a ride, she still hadn't come to trust them. She continued to question their reasons for inviting her along, though she questioned Merle more than Daryl. Daryl had seemed annoyed by her presence from the start, but Merle was queerly welcoming and it was off-putting. She just couldn't convince herself that he had good intentions about her. Maybe that was her own distrusting nature, maybe the fault was hers, but even now she was more inclined to speak with Daryl than his brother. Merle had a brutish, rude and crude way about him that rubbed her all wrong. Despite the initial invitation which, she reminded herself, had come only after he had forcefully drained her car's gas tank Merle had been vulgar and coarse and Rori had never responded well to people like that.

In Daryl's case, he was just outwardly unhappy with her. That, she could deal with.

Rori wanted to see if the cop would let her go with him. Maybe help her get to the CDC after the coming tragedy in Atlanta had ceased its burning. The military wouldn't bomb the area around the CDC, that place was far too valuable. They'd leave it be, but Rori still had no intention of being anywhere near Atlanta until the devastation had simmered.

Before she said goodbye to Merle and Daryl, though, Rori felt she needed to warn them. They deserved that much.

"Daryl," she began once the two of them were out of earshot. He watched her with those narrow ice-blue eyes, face set in a stony and doubtful expression. She tried to ignore his prickly demeanor, thinking she couldn't exactly blame him. She was considering both he and his brother with that same mistrust, though she wasn't as overt with it.

"You can't go to Atlanta," she said, internally shying away from having said "you" instead of "we." She already felt guilty about her intentions. The cop was better for her, though. She told herself this as Daryl's brow furrowed.

"The hell you talkin' 'bout?" he asked skeptically. "Why not? He ain't the first to say it's safe, and that was the plan long before we took your sorry ass in," he pressed hotly.

Rori flinched away at the comment, guilt growing. She tried to appease the feeling by saying what she could and warning him again. "It's not safe. It's just…it's not."

Daryl looked anything but convinced. "What the hell you know about it?"

"Look, Daryl, you guys brought me with you for a reason, right? I mean, you could have just left me on the side of the road—"

"Should have," Daryl interrupted with bitter sarcasm.

"Right, well," Rori plowed on. "You wouldn't have brought me along if you didn't think I could be useful. That's just…that's not what people do anymore. Sad to say."

"We brought you 'cause Merle…" Daryl injected, though he paused as if he was unsure about how to continue. "'He's got a…a thing about young girls." Daryl met her gaze and Rori frowned, certain she had heard a tone of warning in Daryl's voice. He didn't say anything else and suddenly looked away with a scowl.

"Yeah, okay, um," she stumbled over her words before getting back on track. "Anyway, I'm just trying to fulfill my usefulness. You have to trust me on this."

Daryl scoffed quietly but said nothing.

"Daryl," she insisted a bit more forcefully. "Please. I want you guys to be safe."

Still he said nothing, though he backed away slightly and wouldn't meet her gaze. She couldn't quite read his expression, but thought she saw an uncomfortable flash of something childlike flicker across his face.

After a moment of grinding his teeth and picking at his nails, he finally said, "You did well with that cop, and Merle. Calmin' them down and all."

Rori frowned, wondering if this was his way of accepting her insistence about Atlanta. Personally, she thought a "thank you" to be fairly simple…though this did allow her to move on to her next subject.

"Thanks. About the cop, I think I'm going to ask him if—" she was about to say if she could go along with him, leaving behind Merle and Daryl, when a loud "bang" shattered the air.

The shock of the sound caused both she and Daryl to jerk in surprise. Daryl immediately brought his crossbow, which he'd slung around his back, to the ready and the both of them turned their wide eyes to Merle and Mitch. The silence that followed the gunshot was deafening and the world seemed to suck in a long and low breath. The birds had gone silent and in the silver morning light Rori gaped as she looked upon the two men. Mitch was laying against one of the overturned cars, legs splayed out and a blood-soaked hand over the bullet wound in his stomach. The wound was gushing, Mitch gasping for breath and looking delirious and confused.

Merle bent down and took the revolver from where it lay next to the cop, his Hi-Power still firmly gripped in his other hand. He then unhooked the ammo-belt from the cop's waist and came away with his loot, not even bothering to glance at the dying man.

"What did you do!" Rori screamed as she ran forward, Daryl close on her heels.

"He was bit," Merle responded flatly as Rori sunk to her knees next to Mitch. His mouth was open, gasping as blood drizzled down from the sides of his mouth. There was a terrible gurgling sound coming from his throat, as if he were trying to speak and instead choking.

Rori looked him over helplessly, hands moving through the air just beyond his body as if she were afraid that touching him would chase away whatever life was still left.

"What the fuck do you mean!" she roared at Merle, who was now examining the revolver and working the hammer experimentally. He bent down and used the muzzle of the gun to lift the cop's left sleeve, revealing a bandaged and bloodied wound. The blood clot on the bandage was about the size of a human bite radius and Rori sucked in a sobbing breath as she looked at it.

"See?" Merle snapped at Rori. "Bit. Sonoffabitch was hidin' it from us."

"That's no reason to shoot him!" Rori argued desperately. She looked to Daryl for a sign of concurrence or support. He didn't look at her, nor would he look at Mitch, and instead kept his head bowed and face set without emotion.

"Meter maid was dead already," Merle responded, stepping back from the bleeding man as if he were worried about dirtying his boots. "And, shit, we need the ammo," he concluded without an ounce of sympathy.

"Then…" Rori staggered, looking back to Mitch in a panic, trying to formulate some way to help him. Or...to end his suffering. "Then at least…put him out of his misery, for Christ's sake!"

Mitch was still struggling for breath as his hands rubbed down his abdomen mindlessly, his white work shirt soaked in red. Rori doubted he understood what was happening between the shock, pain and semi-consciousness...but dying like this, slowly, that was no way to let this end.

Merle was turning away and examining the revolver once again. "No can do, sugar tits. Guns and ammo are like gold these days, ain't wastin' the bullet." With that, Merle walked away and a vicious part of Rori wanted to run him down…run him down and…she didn't know what. But her anger was so potent in that moment, so violent and filled with pain for this man that her breathing was coming in short, rapid breaths. She turned back to look at Mitch with a sad, lost expression. And then she sought out Daryl who was still standing over them as if he were caught between lingering and leaving.

"Daryl…can you…?" she didn't finish the requested but watched him with a sort of morbid hope.

Daryl clinched his jaw and looked at her with uncertainty and hesitation in his narrow eyes. He didn't answer.

"Daryl, please," she begged. "You can use my gun, even, so you won't have to _waste_ a bullet." She repeated Merle's words with audible disgust. Bite or no bite, this man was a human being who deserved better than being put down like a rabid dog. But the damage had been done and Rori could hear Mitch suffering with every ragged and watery breath he tried to suck down into his flooding lungs.

Daryl looked down at Rori and the dying man, face stony. "Why don't you?"

Rori stared at him, dumbfounded. "Because," she fumbled with her words as hot tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. How could they be having this conversation? "Because…I just…I can't." Her voice cracked, pleading with him. She held her Walther out to him, hands shaking.

"Please."

Rori didn't know enough about crossbows to know if one of Daryl's bolts would provide a clean kill, and right here was not the time to discuss such a thing. Besides that, though, Rori was desperate. Desperate to end this man's suffering and so completely disgusted with herself in that moment because _she_ wasn't brave enough to do it. Rori knew what she was asking of Daryl and she knew how terrible it was. She felt sick to her stomach, feverish and viciously cold all at once.

Bite or no bite, she was asking Daryl to do something terrible, something she had no right to ask.

Daryl locked eyes with her and Rori stared back, stricken. An awful moment of silence passed between them and then Daryl reached out and took the pistol from her hand.

"Go on," he said in a quiet voice. It surprised Rori and woke a new sensation of guilt and empathy in her.

"Daryl, I'm—" Rori tried to say something, searching to make the moment less appalling.

"Get!" Daryl snarled, cutting her off as his temper spiked.

Rori shut up, clinched her jaw and squeezed Mitch's arm, willing a quiet apology upon him. She then stood and started back around the barricade towards the truck.

The dawn was blood red that morning, and when the gunshot cracked through the air Rori jumped violently as the sound pierced the sky and echoed around them before fading into the unfeeling Georgia wilderness.


	7. Chapter 7: The Doomed City

**Author's Note: Oh man, thanks for all the compliments on the last chapter! This has become addictingly fun to write! Hope you enjoy what's next!**

* * *

**Chapter Seven: The Doomed City**

No one spoke.

Rori thought it was better that way. Kinder. More respectful. She was sitting in the grass on the roadside, knees tucked up to her chin and shoulders trembling as she struggled to not lose it completely. Daryl had yet to emerge from behind the barricade and after some time had passed she began to take notice of his absence. She was staring blankly at a large green road sign, the kind that told you how far from civilization you were. It read: "Charlotte...20."

The miserable and grotesque feeling in her gut told her they were so much farther away from civilization than that.

Tears were still stinging at her eyes when Daryl finally appeared, stalking around one of the overturned cars and walking towards her. Rori wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and stood up to meet him. Daryl wordlessly pressed the Walther back into her hands and started towards the truck where Merle was unloading the motorcycle and had called to Daryl for assistance.

"We should bury him," Rori suggested meekly to Daryl before he was out of earshot.

Daryl's stride faltered, just slightly. "Took care of it," he said without looking at her. Daryl then continued on to go help his brother removed the bulky motorcycle from the bed of the truck.

It could have been said of Merle that he was chipper that morning. As he and Daryl set the bike on the asphalt, Merle was actually humming and as Rori walked over and heard the tune she was gripped by the sudden compulsion to slap him. She balled her hands into fists and bypassed the brothers before she realized what she was doing: Shunning Merle Dixon like a small child performing the silent treatment.

Like he'd care…

Like she'd actually be able to pull it off…

Her emotions were written all over her face. Even in her silence her expression screamed. Angry. Grieving. Exhausted. Conflicted…

Hell, there probably wasn't even a word for what she was feeling in that moment. Rori, with her undergrad and PhD and leadership position at the White House, was struck dumb by both emotion and mental strain. Was she actually shunning Merle or was she just too wrought to spare attention to anything other than her frantic scramble to get her fury and heartbreak under control.

Rori opened the passenger side door of the truck and climbed inside. The door squeaked and creaked before slamming shut. Through the open car window she could hear the sudden burst and roar of the motorcycle as it revved to life. She didn't even flinch at the sound. She was too wrung out, too sentimentally gutted and beyond the point of debilitated tiredness. Merle yelled something about "gushy menopausal women" and Rori cringed at his barking laugh.

Her vision was already starting to swim when Daryl climbed up onto the driver-side seat. And she was blackout sleeping by the time the truck swung west and they started on the road towards Atlanta.

* * *

It was the motionlessness of the truck that must have woke her, because when Rori blinked wearily into the bright sunlight streaming through the windshield, the truck was deserted. She swung her head around in confusion, looking for Daryl or Merle, then opened the truck door and stepped down onto the roadside. They were still on the interstate and all around her rose the Georgia woodland, just like it had when she'd fallen asleep. Only now the barricade was long gone and Rori noticed they'd been driving down the opposite side of the road.

Going west…towards Atlanta.

Shit!

She scanned the area again for the brothers but didn't see them. A gas can was resting by the rear wheel of the truck, having been removed from the Dixon's stash of gasoline in the truck bed. They had a good five or six cans and lidded buckets full of gas back there - one of them being what they had scavenged from her Civic - and given the way Merle's recent encounter with the cop had gone…Rori wasn't all that certain she wanted to know how the brothers had come to acquire their healthy store of supplies.

She was yawning and stretching out her arms when both Merle and Daryl emerged from the tree line. Daryl had a dead rabbit gripped by its back legs and it swung back and forth at his side as he walked up the small incline to the truck. She eyed it sleepily and suddenly realized just how hungry she was. It had been over a day since Rori had eaten…

Daryl tossed the rabbit into the bed of the truck and unloaded his crossbow into the back, as well.

"Lookit who it is," Merle exclaimed sarcastically as he walked up behind Daryl and gave Rori one of those big unsettling smiles. "Sugar tits, up and movin' 'round. You dreamin' of me?" He licked and bit his lips in a kind of vulgar action and Rori looked away, unamused.

"Where are we?" She asked, ignoring Merle's obnoxious and rude behavior.

"'Bout an hour outside Atlanta," Daryl answered. Rori glanced to him and they exchanged a somewhat tense look.

"You guys see anyone else headed into the city?" she asked, eyes darting around the deserted interstate. She was trying to lead the conversation into the beginnings of an argument she wanted to make for staying away from Atlanta without openly demanding it…or without having to give herself up as someone who worked for the government.

Merle didn't seem to really consider her question and responded absently, "Nah, few lone rangers hot assin' it up the road. But for the most part been quieter than a multi-drilled whore in a church."

"Well," Rori began, trying to rid her mind of the image. "The closer we get to Atlanta the worse the traffic will become. I'd be willing to bet it's bumper to bumper all the way in." She didn't need to bet, she'd seen it yesterday on the road out. Everyone was trying to get in, everyone was chasing the safe zone rumors. She wasn't going to tell them that, though. There was too much potential in that information to start up an inquiry she didn't want.

"Why don't we keep going for a bit and then bunk down for the night somewhere outside the city? Cook that rabbit, get some decent sleep and drive in during the morning?" Rori suggested. She watched Daryl carefully, he was eyeing her with a suspicious and dark expression but didn't say anything.

"I see. You lookin' to get a little alone time with me, ain't ya?" Merle smirked as he sauntered closer. "Go off somewhere dark and private and do the ugly tango?"

Rori cringed and Daryl even seemed to shift uncomfortably.

"Hey, c'mon. She's making a point," Daryl interjected. "Full night sleep sounds ingenious right 'bout now."

Rori was overcome by the sudden desire to hug Daryl in that moment, though she was pretty sure if she acted on that impulse he'd run her through with his knife. Still, his opinion had to carry some weight with his older brother, right? And whether Daryl was agreeing with her based on what she had told him earlier, or his desire for some sleep or for some other unknown reason, she didn't care.

All she needed was the one night. They just had to stay out of the city for tonight…after that, the damage would be done if the Secretary of Defense and the NSC held to the schedule they'd presented to the President before the riots at the White House.

Merle grinned a wide, mocking grin and responded, his voice laced with ridicule. "You always was a pussy little princess, Darleena. It hurt when your balls suck back up into ya like that?"

Rori's hopes diminished. Apparently the relationship between the two wasn't quite as amicable as she'd assumed. She thought about how else to convince Merle if his own brother couldn't do it, and came up short.

Maybe she'd just have them drop her off before the city limits…

"Hey, screw you, fuck ass!" Daryl spat back. "Fuck do I even bother with ya? Dumbass obstinate fool." He turned away indignantly and angrily from Merle, who gave Daryl the middle finger, and at that point diplomacy fell apart.

The group loaded up to go back on the road, Daryl and Rori returning to the truck cab and Merle mounting back up onto his bike. Rori thought about how to address the Atlanta problem as they traveled down the road. Her hands anxiously worked the magazine release on her pistol, clicking and unclicking the mag in place. At one point she drew the cartridge fully out of the butt of the gun and looked it over thoughtfully. Her mind was working over an excuse to pull their small caravan over when she noticed that the mag was fully loaded.

Rori frowned. There should have been a bullet missing from when Daryl had used the pistol earlier that morning.

"You reload this?" she asked him, once again counting the bullets through the small holes in the side of the cartridge.

For a moment, Daryl didn't answer and instead only stared intently over the dash at Merle who was riding ahead of them. Then, "Yeah. What about it?" he asked with a note of defensiveness.

"Nothing," she said, and then added, "Thanks. You didn't have to do that."

They sat in silence for a while before Daryl frowned and rolled his shoulders forward in a somewhat uncomfortable manner. "Should get a better gun. Three eighty's for feeble old grey-haired grandmas wantin' to feel safe while chain smokin' and hobbling 'round their house."

"Yeah," Rori said with a small hint of surprise at Daryl's somewhat friendly suggestion. "Okay, yeah, I'll keep a look out for a better one."

About a half hour later they hadn't said much more and Rori was desperate to get them off the road before they got much closer to the city. Already civilization was beginning to peak up around them. They had passed two McDonald's through three small towns as well as a few gas stations and dead traffic lights. There were more people, too. A few cars had sped past them and they'd spotted one or two small groups walking along the side of the road.

Everyone was going west and it turned her stomach all the wrong ways.

"Daryl, pull over," she finally said.

"What?" he gave her a sidelong and uncompliant look.

"Just pull over. Look, up there," she pointed at a road sign which indicated the turn off point for the 'Blue Tick Bar & Grill.' "Just turn off. I'm exhausted and hungry and I'm not going any further." She placed her hand on the door handle of the truck defiantly, as if threatening to throw the thing wide open if he didn't do as she was saying.

"The hell you ain't!" he shot back. "You heard Merle."

"And I don't give a rat's ass!" she yelled back. "Merle's a redneck son of a bitch who's being stubborn just to prove he's in charge of this ridiculous fucktard of a group! He's probably dumb enough to stick a gun in his mouth just to show it shoots rainbows and kittens instead of bullets if someone dared him to!"

Daryl drew back, both enraged and surprised by her sudden outburst. Rori felt all the emotions from the past few days come flooding back. All the anger and the sorrow and the conflict from the event with Mitch. All the pain and the fear and the guilt from the scene with the jet and Max. All the panic from leaving the White House and DC in a rush and all the terror that sooner or later someone was going to find out who she was. Who she was…and what she knew.

"Hey! You don't talk about my brother like that, you loudmouth bitch!" Daryl shouted. The truck jerked as he took his eyes off the road and stared at her like an attack dog sizing up its next target.

She didn't care, though. She didn't care about pissing him off or ripping their hesitant and somewhat cordial relationship all to hell. Right now all she cared about was getting off the road before they reached Atlanta. And, hell, Daryl should have been more willing to do that given their conversation this morning. Why the fuck was he being so obstinate?

"Just turn the truck, Daryl!" she screamed, desperate and insistent and ready to grab hold of the wheel and do it herself if needed.

But Daryl, maybe because of their earlier conversation or maybe because he saw how panicked she was about staying away from the city, didn't argue. Instead, he honked the horn to grab Merle's attention and then turned right off the interstate and onto a dirt road which led down and into the woods. Tall skinny signs posted on rusting metal polls along the dirt road indicated that the bar was about a half-mile away. Daryl gritted his teeth and set his jaw indignantly as the truck bounced over the unpaved trail.

They pulled into a dirt lot absent of other cars and Rori studied the bar silently. It was a log building, aged and backwoodsy with burnt out neon signs in the windows. It was the sort of place one would expect to find on a Georgia dirt road. The sort of place that only had three kinds of beer on tap, none of them light, and four items on the menu. It was a local dive, for sure. A place where the same people came and went every night and unknowns were treated with hostility.

It was ringed by a full and short porch area, no doubt for smoking, and behind it was a large cliff drop off that overlooked the city of Atlanta below. The sun had just begun to set as they exited the truck.

Merle pulled into the lot on his roaring bike with a sense of self-righteousness about him. He shut the bike off, dismounted and passed her and Daryl on his way inside.

"Sackless princess," he remarked snidely at Daryl as he walked by. "Alls I'll say is there'd better be booze so I can enjoy the apocalypse in style," Merle shouted before throwing open the door and stomping into the bar.

Daryl followed him stiffly and without a word to Rori. She crossed her arms and drew in a deep breath before turning her eyes to look at Atlanta beyond the bar and below the cliffs. The sunset was casting an orange tint onto the skyscrapers and suburbs below. It was a fiery glow, bold and ominous and Rori couldn't help but shudder as she thought about the approaching night and what it was bringing with it.

* * *

They ate. Merle drank. And the sun set.

No one said much during their dinner and once the cooked rabbit was picked over the trio went their separate ways. Daryl stalked outside, leaving Rori to rummage around behind the bar for any supplies which they may be able to use. She didn't notice Merle until he was directly behind her, smelling of alcohol and sweat.

"So we gonna get nasty or what?"

Rori started and jumped up from where she'd been on her knees, going through one of the lower cabinets below the counter. She backed up into the bar as Merle advanced on her, drunk and big and intent.

Rori's face contorted into a grimace as she put her hands out in front of her defensively. "No thanks, Merle. Just leave me alone, okay? You're drunk."

Merle wasn't dissuaded by Rori's rebuke and only continued to press his unwelcome suggestion. "C'mon, girl. Ain't no reason to be shy. I bet you been 'round the block more than a few times."

"Fuck you, jackass," she retorted.

"Exactly," Merle smirked foully and Rori rolled her eyes.

"I have standards and you do not meet them even remotely." She tried to wiggle her way around him but his bulk was trapping her between him and the bar.

Merle just grinned. "World's over, sweet lips. Ain't too many to choose from no more."

"She said no, Merle." Daryl had come back inside and was striding carefully around the edge of the bar. And in the short time they had been traveling together, Rori had never been happier to see him.

She again tried to slide away from Merle, who had come in so close it was forcing her to lean back over the bar. Merle placed one of his hands on the countertop, his bulky arm barring her escape, and pressed his face even closer.

"She don't mean it," he breathed. Rori shuddered, disgusted at the hotness of his breath and what she could only describe as the smell of old eggs and ripe alcohol. She cringed away and tried to duck under his arm but he caught her and pushed her back into the bar. Her back hit the counter and she hissed painfully then reached for the reassuring feel of the pistol on her hip, pleading mentally that she wouldn't need to use it.

"Let her go!" Daryl barked. He stole up behind Merle and grabbed his brother by the shoulder then swung him back and away from Rori.

Rori took the chance and darted away around the bar and towards the nearest exit outside.

"Didn't mean nothin' by it. Was only givin' her the opportunity to get in good with ol' Merle," Rori heard him laugh as she pushed through the door and sucked in a ragged and warm breath as the night air hit her face.

She stepped to the edge of the wooden porch that circled the entirety of the building and wrung her hands together, staring out into the darkening Georgia forest beyond the dirt parking lot. Her breathing was rapid and her legs felt cold. She rubbed the back of her neck and her hand came away wet with sweat.

Maybe she should just go…leave…

She gazed at the forest and felt a desolate and longing desire to step off the porch and disappear.

She wouldn't last a day…

"You gonna sleep out here?"

Rori rounded on Daryl with a surprising swiftness, her expression both frightened and defensive as she reached again for her pistol. Daryl raised his hands peaceably and took a small step back.

She frowned apologetically and took her hand away from the holster, placing it on her neck and rubbing anxiously. "Sorry. Um, no." she said.

Daryl crossed his arms and shrugged. "I don't care what you do."

An awkward pause in the conversation passed between them. Daryl looked down and scuffed the wood planking with the toe of his boot, slightly rocking his body back and forth in what Rori assumed to be a nervous energy. She brought her hand away from her neck and scratched at the scrapes on her arm. They were healing but itched terribly.

"Shouldn't scratch those," Daryl commented. His head was bowed but he peered up at her hesitantly. "Doc would tell you the same thing," he said with a small and snide tone, referencing her earlier claim of being a Doctor.

"Sorry," she said again before stuffing her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. Rori looked back out at the forest with a disheartened frown.

Daryl, perhaps sensing her disenchantment or just trying to break the silence, offered a tentative comment. "He's ain't that bad, you know. Just gets carried away."

Rori glanced at him but said nothing and instead only gave him a small smile. She wouldn't say what she thought, that that sort of "carried away" often landed men in jail.

He didn't seem pleased with her response and grimaced quietly, turning away from her and starting back towards the door inside.

"Thank you," she called after him. There was a tiny note of uncertainty in her voice, as if she was worried about acknowledging his actions inside the bar. From what she had seen, Daryl and his brother had a tenuous relationship and a part of her was concerned that Daryl stepping in on Merle would only do to strain their unstable alliance.

Daryl paused at the door but didn't speak, nor did he turn around. Rori ducked her head guiltily and looked back out at the forest.

"What'd you mean about Atlanta?" Daryl suddenly asked, causing Rori to start as he walked back over to her side.

He frowned at her skeptically and internally she squirmed under his hard gaze. "What?" she asked lamely.

"You told me this mornin' not to go to Atlanta. That it wasn't safe. Then you flipped shit when we got about a half-hour out." His voice had an edge of accusation to it that made her incredibly uncomfortable. "Why?"

Rori rubbed her arm absently and once again found herself scrambling for something to say without telling the whole truth. "Well, it's a city, right?" she reasoned. "Lots of people means lots of dead people. I don't know why everyone's saying it's safe but there's no way they've got a handle on all those infected." It was a pathetic answer and she felt both guilty and ridiculous for saying it, but it was the best she could come up with on the spot. Why she hadn't thought of something better earlier escaped her. Of course Daryl would ask about this, why the hell hadn't she come up with an excuse before now?

Dumbass oversight…

Daryl didn't look as if he was buying into her explanation and Rori tried a small reassuring smile. "Besides, I hate the Falcons. I mean, come on, dog killing quarterback…" she trailed off and gave a nervous laugh.

"Bullshit!" Daryl snapped back.

That was when the choppers shrieked overhead. Both Rori and Daryl jumped then ducked instinctively as the helicopters screamed past and headed towards Atlanta. It was a group of six, Blackhawks from what Rori could make out, though she had never been the best at identifying aircraft. The trees rustled and swayed as they flew past and as Rori followed their flight path with her eyes she could see more of them hovering over the city and flying in. She cringed.

Daryl jumped off the porch and took a few steps towards the overlook as the choppers approached the city limits, but Rori just shut her eyes and waited.

She didn't want to watch this.

She heard the bombs go off as the darkness beyond her eyelids turned red. A constant roar of fire and explosions sounded off from the city and from up here on the cliff the thunder reverberated into the woods like cannon shot.

"What the fuck!" she heard Daryl shout, his voice somewhere between shock and disbelief. "What the fuck!"

Rori's eyes opened and in front of her was a bedlam of fire and destruction. The streets were engulfed in flame, heat and color was radiating off the glass skyscrapers and devouring the smaller buildings in billows. Some of the helicopters were spraying the streets with gunshot so hot it blazed gold in the night. The scene made her weak in the knees and light in the head. She tried to not think about all the uninfected people…all the innocent people…all the people they hadn't warned.

The guilt was sickening, stomach-wrenching and overwhelming.

And then she met Daryl's gaze. He had turned away from the burning city below the overlook and was staring at her with an expression of horrific understanding and allegation.

"You knew…" he said, voice soft with mounting comprehension. And then he yelled; aggressive and accusing as he pointed back at the Atlanta fires. "You fucking knew!"


End file.
